Negligence in hospitals is being exposed like never before. Mohamed El-Sayed tries to find out if this means the government is taking deteriorating health care services more seriously Two weeks ago, Atef Abdel-Moneim headed to the Nile Health Insurance Hospital, a public facility in the northern Cairo district of Shubra Al-Kheima, to undergo a hernia surgery. He ended up being given an over-doze of anesthesia, which made his heart stop beating for an hour and a half. Believing that the patient was dead, the doctor contacted Abdel-Moneim's family and asked them to take his dead body away. A few minutes later, however, Abdel-Moneim regained consciousness. The first thing he saw was a surgeon making an incision in another patient's belly in the same room. Frightened out of his wits, he tried to jump out of the window, and ended up seriously injuring his backbone. Hospital officials then tied Abdel-Moneim down, and filed a complaint against him, claiming that he tried to commit suicide during "an epileptic fit". Abdel-Moneim's case, which made it to the front pages of several newspapers, ended up attracting the attention of President Hosni Mubarak, who ordered an investigation into the incident. "The Health Ministry must be strict in dealing with any kind of negligence in public hospitals," Mubarak said. Complying with the president's orders, state security officials rushed to the hospital to prepare a report. Specialised doctors from Ain Shams University examined Abdel-Moneim, and refuted the hospital's account. Meanwhile, over the course of the past month alone, similar cases of negligence have been reported in public hospitals in Ismailia, Suez and Beheira. Newly-appointed governors in these regions paid surprise visits to the main public hospitals within their jurisdictions, exposing a great deal of negligence in the process. In Beheira, for example, a patient infected with AIDS underwent surgery at a public hospital without his doctors being aware that he was infected. In fact, many other patients were operated on in the same room with the same instruments that were used on the patient who had AIDS. When the patient's sister told the hospital about his condition, the surgeon had a nervous breakdown. This sort of carelessness, however, was not limited to public or state-run hospitals. Popular actress Soad Nasr has been in a coma at a private hospital for three weeks now, after being given an over-dose of anesthesia in preparation for a liposuction operation. Responding to these and other incidents, newly- appointed Health Minister Hatem El-Gabaly, the co-owner and former manager of the esteemed Dar Al-Fouad Hospital in 6 October, told a press conference on Saturday that he was "committed to paying secret and surprise visits to ministry-affiliated hospitals". The minister said he would "use special cameras during these surprise visits to record footage of any negligence he saw, which would then be used as evidence to punish [the offenders]". It was not unusual, considering the president's high- profile interest in the issue, for governors and top health officials to suddenly undertake numerous surprise visits to public hospitals, checking the facilities' readiness and listening to patients' complaints. Do these moves, however, indicate a serious attempt to fix a highly dysfunctional health service? Or is it just the typical hubbub that always seems to follow the president's interest in a public issue, and then just as rapidly dies out? Prominent gynecologist and Cairo University professor Mohamed Abul-Ghar does not think the current frenzy will have any lasting effect. A member of the Doctors for Change movement, Abul-Ghar said that "the minister and health officials might spend all day and all night conducting surprise visits, and they may even do some cosmetic changes, but nothing will really change." According to Abul-Ghar, exposing the poor conditions at government-run hospitals may actually be "a preliminary step towards privatising this extremely vital sector. Offering good health insurance services would require people to pay double their monthly salaries, which is impossible since a large chunk of the population is lower-income." An informed Health Ministry source indicated that "more than 60 per cent of the ministry's budget is spent on infrastructure and buildings, which means that barely 40 per cent goes to patients and doctors." This breakdown, he said, is a result of "a political decision taken at the highest levels". Abul-Ghar said a "new system" had to be instated. But while drastic changes are needed, "the government's potential to make such changes are very weak," he said. "It doesn't have the will or the intention to improve the Egyptian people's quality of life."
